Looks.

Watercolor studies is about all I have time to do these days besides drawing our awesome new comics. It's a good break from the daily routine of the pages, and a good way to warm up as well as cool off.

When

PIXU and 5 at Floating Wolrd!

Floating World Comic, in Portland, will host this amazing exposition of original art form all the awesome creators of the Eisner Winner 5 and the new face of terror, PIXU!
Can't miss this event!
And if you haven't ordered PIXU yet, do it while you can. Our very limited 1000 copies print run WILL END FAST.
Click HERE and guarantee your copy!

PIXU 2

Click HERE and order your copy TODAY!

Watercolor at the garden.

automatic Cafard

Done today while teaching some brush techniques.

layout

My page layouts are the size of a postcard, and Bá and I solve all the storytelling and design "problems" of a page right there and then.

We used to do them smaller, the size you expect a "thumbnail" to be (hence the name), but doing them slightly bigger allows us to really see the story flow and imagine the layouts as smaller versions of the page instead of doodles.

PIXU 2 is coming

With some delay, the art is done. When you read it, i hope you agree it was for the best. We self publish this thing, we do it because we love comics, we love to tell stories and we really believe in the work we do. At the end of the day, we are not a big corporation filling the monthly market of comic books, where the most important thing is to hit the scheduled slot on the comic-book shelves. At the end of the day, we do this because we love it and we want to share it with as many people as we can, and to better express our love we have to give it our best. Sometimes, our best takes more time than we anticipated, but it's something we'll be proud of. We already are.

The printer people are our pals (we have been using the same guys for three years now), so we'll try to get it done faster, so it's just a matter of time now. The hard work, the good work, the "I still can't believe I do this for a living" work, it's done.

And it's coming.

If you haven't ordered your copy, you can still do it online at Khepri.com ( click here). It's your safest bet to grab you PIXU, so hurry to get it before the PIXU gets you.

Doodling

The drawings above were made on the actual pages of my script yesterday while Bá and I were talking with Grampá and Rafa, who were visiting (by visiting you can read "using our scanner"). These fast sketches, the kind you draw while you're talking, are good studies, and good fun. Seeing Grampá's new pages was also great fun, and following the more than 100 pages Rafa had to show was mind blowing. It's great for an artist to see other artist's works, there's a mutual inspiration, an energy that we don't get only looking at your own work. When you see greatness, you want to do great things.

Bá and I are always talking that we don't sketch often enough anymore. Simple drawings are delicious and we should fit them into our daily breaks.

Yesterday, we were on a meeting and there was paper and pencils on the table. It was just a talking kind of meeting, but I grabbed a piece of paper and started doodling. I drew the woman who were doing most of the talking, who had a big ring on her right hand, and who smoked a lot. It was cold, and her coat looked warm. For woman's standards, her hair was short.

After the meeting, I folded the piece of paper and put it in my pocket. When we came back to the studio, I saw the sketch again and decided it was okay. It felt nice to do it, because I did it for kicks.

We should all do some things just for the fun of it.

our iGoogle

Here's a video about our iGoogle theme. Also featuring another Brazilian artist's theme, Gustavo Rosa.



Google has invited artists of all mediums to collaborate with them and we were pleased to be part of such a cool pack.

Watercolor drawing.

Sometimes I forget what we can draw while listening to somebody talk. Given the right tools, it's amazing how freeing these "loose" drawings are. Every artist should try it at times, in bars, in school, at conventions.

The "capture the moment" kinda drawing sometimes says more about you than about the person you're portraying.

Umbrella won!

Umbrella Academy just won the Harvey Award of Best New Series.

Vasilis won for Best New Talent!



To see the full list of nominees and winners, click here (Thanks Heidi).

Who will survive?

Some times, the pencil art is almost the same as the final inking, but sometimes it's so loose, and there's so much left only for the pen, for the brush and for the cruel mistakes that we make once we're using tools we can't erase.

Who will survive the PIXU?

You can pre-order both PIXU 1 and PIXU 2 at this link here.

Finally, original art for sale!

Ever since we started working on high profile projects like Casanova, Umbrella Academy and Sugar Shock, we've been getting mail about selling original art. Since we live in Brazil and it's not an easy task to deal with shipping and money transactions, we only have done this sort of thing personally when we go to San Diego.

Well, we're very glad to announce that we have some pages available for sale with the nice folks from Beguiling, in Toronto. They have some pages and art cover from all the projects above. If we like how this goes, maybe it's the way to make everyone happy after all.

For pages of Gabriel Ba:
http://www.beguiling.com/artproductlist.asp?ID=79

For pages of Fabio Moon:
http://www.beguiling.com/artproductlist.asp?ID=80
 

'Daytripper' on Newsarama

There I was, in San Diego, going to the DC booth to check with Bob Schreck what time was the Vertigo panel I was suppose to go to announce that Bá and I were doing a series for Vertigo. As I arrived, to my surprise, Bob had printed copies of the first issue of Daytripper in hand, and he was showing it to a girl. A woman, actually, but I call women girls all the time.

Turns out she was a reporter and she was asking him questions about the series, and since I turned out at that time, I was interviewed as well. Call it fate, I call it strange. It's okay, I'm used to strange. Have you met my brother?

Anyway, the article is up at newsarama, and it's the first time we (I) had to talk about what the series was about and how was it working on it. I think I did pretty good right there on the fly, and I'm sure I was a lot more nervous twenty minutes later on the Vertigo panel. Bob made me look good, though.

So, click here on the link and read alway.

Back to the drawing board.

The girl you'll meet.

It's coming.

Have you pre-ordered PIXU 2 already? You should. The story unfolds, the characters interact, everything comes together and the story ends. It's coming and when it arrives nothing will ever be the same.

In case you're not following us on twitter, here's the latest:

-Finishing an issue of Umbrella Academy tonight (which means inking several pages), and doing a cover tomorrow.
-Working on Daytripper script over the weekend, and going back to drawing pages during the week.
-Reading the BPRD 1947 script. Read it once already, and it's good.
-Thumbnailing the "one page a month" story we do for a brazilian magazine so we can draw it tomorrow.
- We started a weekly comic strip in one of Brazil's biggest newspapers and the first was published today.

And you know what? That's just the beginning.

It's time to do it and it's up to you.

We'll be falling off the face of the world for a few weeks. New comics must be made, and written, and drawn, and it's up to us to do it (our part, at least). A good artist creates art and the art is a reflection of his world, and so we must live in this world and interact with people, but at the same time we must learn to respect the attention that is required to produce new work, and to pay attention, there are times when we must focus. Imagine if we lose this window of opportunity?

We love comics. To be able to draw and write comics every day is amazing. To be able to communicate with others with stories you tell is the best job in the world.

While we're at the drawing board, send your email to us and we'll answer them the best that we can, but if we don't, it's just because we're making new comics and that is what everybody wants, right? Updates will continue when we have something important to say (or to show), even if we have to twitter it.

Some important news:


-Pre-order PIXU 2

Khepri is already taking pre-orders for the conclusion of our little PIXU saga. Don't miss out on this internet bargain, and your best bet to acquire the limited edition of the second volume of this horror curse.

-Eisners:



Since we've been making the Why comics videos, we also meant to show our little participation on this year's Eisner Awards, but when we we're enthusiastically winning the award for best anthology with 5, we didn't film it. Now, more than a month later, we discovered that someone did, and we're finally able to remember what we said up there when we were already high on the happiness of it all.

It's up to all of us to make more, and make it better, and keep going.

Until we're back, behave. And let's make great comics.

Why Comics? - part 2

Why Comics?

answers by:
Gerard Way (Eisner Award winner, writer of The Umbrella Academy);
Gabriel Bá (Multiple Eisner Award winner, brazilian storyteller, author of De:Tales, 5 and PIXU , artist of The Umbrella Academy and Casanova);
Dave Stewart (Multiple Eisner Award winner colorist of BPRD, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Cut, Hellboy, Lobster Johnson, The Umbrella Academy (Dark Horse); The Spirit (DC))

Why Comics? - part 1

Why Comics?
answers by:
Matt Fraction (Eisner Award nominated writer of CASANOVA, The Immortal Iron Fist, Punisher War Journal and Uncanny X-Men);
Ivan Brandon (Eisner Award nominated writer of NYC Mech, 24seven e Cross Bronx);
Grampá (Eisner Award winner, brazilian cartoonist, author of the graphic novel Mesmo Delivery)